Chapter Preview: Warlike!

Hey everyone!

Because you liked the character introduction I did yesterday so much (seriously! I got like three or four times the views of my other posts!) today's blog post will be a chapter preview of Warlike.

Without much further ado...

CHAPTER ONE

I told myself I didn't need the Elder's permission or even tolerance of my plan to do what had to be done. If we were to survive against the raptors, we needed weapons, and despite Kava's dire warnings, weapons were what the artefacts of old civilizations had left behind in that ancient, terrible haunt, the Deep.

And I wouldn't let Venya's war party have died in vain.

The setting moon had darkened the plant-life around me by the time I approached the Deep's craggy outskirts. I hadn't told Iva where I was going, either. Iva wouldn't understand, the same way she hadn't understood my rage after I tried to convince Kava that after the loss of Venya's war party we couldn't simply stand by, but had to protect ourselves. I wondered whether they were missing me by now. They probably did. It wasn't like me not to come home after a patrol. Kava probably knew where I was and Iva would suspect the same thing if she noticed I hadn't come home yet. It made me wonder briefly who might realize where I was headed first. Iva, who'd been my companion since I turned into a huntress, or Kava, the Elder, who could predict a rainstorm days ahead.

In front of me the brush opened slightly.

I was as close as I ever dared to come before, close enough to see the strange metal spikes, some of them scattered on the ground and the mesh of metal wire covering the ground like a carpet. I'd once tried to follow this carpet to the other side, but I'd not come far. The carpet ended, was torn, and there was no more pattern to it.

In the past, before the year 2138, it might have stood erect, like the fences we used to keep animals out of the village.

But what did they want to keep out? Or in? Had the plague of raptors already been a problem all those centuries ago, when the fence was erected (though I couldn't imagine the thin metal mesh would have held them) or had there been worse threats?

Beyond the fence, the land rose slightly. Trees were growing back slowly here, where they hadn't for centuries, and they were strangely tall, imposing, where they stood isolated. The rest of the area was clear, giving a good view onto the gigantic structure in the middle: the Deep.

It rose from the ground like a massive piece of grey rock. Veins and stranglethorns grew on and over its walls in patches, and usually, the raptors weren't far off. I slowed down my steps, went into a crouch. I was wearing red, of course, but the raptors weren't entirely stupid. If they saw movement, they'd assume something living, because there was no wind. They didn't care what it was they attacked, as long as it was meat. Humans, great cats, water bears, meat.

I ducked past the single standing remains of the giant fence, grown against and within a giant's fan, and slid into the underbrush. The going was difficult here, the brush thick, because no one had been here for a while to clear it. The atmosphere was quiet, no raptor showing its reptilian face. The air smelled slightly rancid, with a lingering, ancient taste of something sharp and metallic, like blood. The closer to the Deep you came, the stronger the smell, but it never sharpened enough to bite your nostrils after all this time. And it had been a while. No one of my tribe remembered what the Deep was for, or when it'd last seen people.

Around the Deep, the night turned cold and the red furs on my shoulders ruffled in a chill wind. The sudden change in temperature made my my fingers stiff and I felt for the metal tube on my back for reassurance. I couldn't have said why I brought it, since it didn't work. Maybe there was no reason at all, and I just liked the feel of the metal. But perhaps I was hoping it would protect me should something happen, that it would suddenly spring to life.

But then, when it happened, the tube stayed as lifeless as it'd been before.

In a short time, I was close enough to the Deep to see the scars on the surface of its walls. The material was unfamiliar to me, a girl of the jungle-forest. It was like stone, but grainy, and, as I later learned, not as hard. It had the colour of stone, too, but no stone ever was as evenly dark grey as the mass of the Deep's wall.

I approached it carefully, making no sound on the broken leafs and twigs around it. Here and there, debris glittered on the ground around me, like puddles of water that should have long evaporated. The air smelled again of the sharply metallic smell. It reminded me momentarily of the time our elders sacrificed a lamb to appeal to the rainstorms.

I snorted inside.

It was little consolation that they hadn't repeated that trick ever since.

I was about to turn towards the structure to examine more closely the material the Deep's walls were made of when the earth trembled slightly beneath my feet. Earthquake, my brain warned. Danger. But then, before instinct could send me to shelter, movement in the corner of my eyes caught my attention. In the same breath I realized how quiet it was, the constant noise of the small jungle-forest animals drowned by something... bigger.

Raptors.

They came out of the treeline, almost half as tall as the trees themselves. Their hides, a green and yellow, covered in thick scales the size of a human head. And those were the smallest of them, the foragers. The bigger ones could reach up to the tree crowns without much difficulty. The raptors' skins were tough as metal, reptilian, but at the same time pliable as leather, and the only thing that could penetrate it was metal, the kind we didn't have, and the reason we couldn't fight them. Thin, short arms, with claws the size of half a man and knife-sharp teeth half again the size of one of my tribesmen threatened if you ever were caught, and getting caught happened too often, even though my tribeswomen didn't stray far from the village and the raptors weren't smart enough to know we were all gathered there.

My breath stalled. I was closer now to the raptors than I'd been before in my life, and an absurd thought suddenly emerged in my mind. Had Ion and Tarin been as terrified when they scouted the Deep? When they somehow managed to kill that raptor we found, later, when we already knew they were lost?

I pushed the thought away almost as soon as it surfaced. Terror was useless. Terror made you careless, made you do things you wouldn't do in your right mind. I needed to keep my wits. I needed to ignore the fear and get out of here.

I made myself as small as possible and slowly slunk back into the shadow of the Deep's wall. There was nowhere to hide except in plain sight. I couldn't fight the raptors, not with the knife on my belt, not with the metal cylinder strapped to my back, but they might not see me if I didn't move. The foragers' red-rimmed, slit-pupiled eyes easily spotted movement, but scenery, especially red, essentially made them blind. The red of my clothing would make me melt with the wall like another rock. The only problem then was their sense of smell. My heart pounded rapidly, quickening my blood, producing more sweat. Blood and sweat. The ultimate cocktail to lure a raptor, and their scent was the second superior sense to their hearing.

I had to move if I wanted to survive.

But I couldn't move.

Foragers were fast, their two hind legs strong and springy. I wouldn't outrun them.

I inched a step to the right and immediately froze as my attention was drawn to the other side of the clearing. To the north-west, where the moon was dying, more of the foragers, outlined against the bright, dark-red glow of the rising sun's corona]. Trapped. Air went through my windpipe with effort. But the wind hadn't turned to bring my smell to either of the raptor schools yet. I could run, make it to the boundary of the Deep, if I was quick enough, and then lose myself in the thicket. But I didn't fool myself. I couldn't outrun the raptors if they caught sight or scent of me and the underbrush wasn't an obstacle for the small foragers and their sharp claws. But the wind wouldn't hold. The night wind always turned south during the day. It could be seen in the shape of trees around the village and around the Deep.

Then what other option did I have? Shaking with the night's cold as well as fear, which I tried to no avail to suppress, I turned back toward the Deep]. It was obvious the Deep wasn't a natural outcrop just as our huts weren't. There'd been rumours, and even more so when Ion and Tarin disappeared, that the Deep was a dwelling place of old. I didn't care about the rumours and I didn't believe the Deep was anything menacing by itself, especially not the birthplace of raptors. I cared not to be spotted, not to end up as the raptors' dinner.

So, instead of trying to outrun certain death, I turned toward the Deep and started to inch my way around its wall by the feel of my clam palm against the concrete.

Where there was a man-made structure, there had to be an entrance. And that was my only chance to survive.

I hope you enjoyed it! The link to the book can be found here: Amazon Link!

Have a good evening/day!